The pursuit of app-iness: embracing tech for employee wellbeing

Tech­nol­o­gy has been the buoy­an­cy aid that’s stopped many firms from going under dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, but what’s less clear is whether it’s helped to keep their work­ers’ spir­its up too.

Com­pa­nies were able to shift their oper­a­tions online and stay con­nect­ed dur­ing the Covid lock­downs thanks to var­i­ous soft­ware appli­ca­tions, includ­ing the now ubiq­ui­tous Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

The fact that work has been pos­si­ble dur­ing these peri­ods of con­fine­ment has sure­ly been a relief to many peo­ple. But using the home as a makeshift work­place has cre­at­ed its own stress­es, espe­cial­ly when employ­ees have felt under pres­sure to be always avail­able – often in sub­op­ti­mal work­ing con­di­tions – while shar­ing the space with part­ners who’ve been laid off, say, or chil­dren who need home-school­ing. 

Pro­po­nents of the tech will say that it’s kept employ­ees con­nect­ed and sup­port­ed their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but busi­ness­es need to be aware of the stress­es of remote work­ing and the dif­fer­ent ways in which these can affect peo­ple.

A deeper connection

A recent poll of UK work­ers by the Insti­tute for Employ­ment Stud­ies found that 48% of respon­dents were work­ing long and irreg­u­lar hours dur­ing the lock­downs. The sur­vey also revealed oth­er health con­cerns: 36% of respon­dents said they felt they were under too much pres­sure from work, 32% report­ed feel­ing unhap­py and 60% were con­cerned that they weren’t get­ting enough phys­i­cal exer­cise.

David Miller, CEO of Lon­don-based cre­ative agency Red Brick Road, remem­bers his own appre­hen­sion about how he would bal­ance the demands of keep­ing his busi­ness run­ning along­side main­tain­ing pas­toral care for his employ­ees as the UK entered its first lock­down in March 2020.

“Team bond­ing suf­fers when peo­ple are work­ing remote­ly. Things such as vir­tu­al quizzes don’t real­ly gen­er­ate that true con­nec­tion,” he says. “Only through human con­tact can you gen­er­ate that impor­tant team effer­ves­cence, unless the tech you’re using is gen­uine­ly designed to pro­voke con­ver­sa­tion and inter­ac­tion.”

A chance con­ver­sa­tion with one of his neigh­bours led Miller to look at an app called The Well­be­ing Games, which instant­ly grabbed his atten­tion.

The brain­child of HR expert Bernadette Thomas, The Well­be­ing Games encour­ages users to com­plete five dai­ly “chal­lenges” in the fol­low­ing areas – move­ment, con­nec­tion, nutri­tion, sleep and mind­ful­ness – over 10 days.

Miller explains that the chal­lenges are, cru­cial­ly, not at all chal­leng­ing, but they do pro­voke engage­ment and improve people’s well­be­ing. Scores are kept con­fi­den­tial, mean­ing that there’s no undue pres­sure on peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly every day, while the tem­po­rary nature of the pro­gramme helps to give it a high­er engage­ment rate than those of its open-end­ed equiv­a­lents.

Miller was so impressed with its effect on his team that he became an equi­ty part­ner in The Well­be­ing Games and is now help­ing to plan the app’s expan­sion.

Building cohesion

Inte­grat­ing new arrivals into a team can be dif­fi­cult for busi­ness­es in nor­mal cir­cum­stances, nev­er mind when they’re hav­ing to do it remote­ly.

Joey Ceunen, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at Care­free, a char­i­ty that pro­vides short breaks for unpaid car­ers, joined the organ­i­sa­tion only a few weeks before Covid-19 struck the UK and remote work­ing became the order of the day. At that point, the only col­league he’d met in per­son was the CEO, Char­lotte New­man.

“The team held reg­u­lar online meet­ings and casu­al calls too, so we could get to know each oth­er, but things weren’t flow­ing,” he recalls. “The loud­er peo­ple were get­ting loud­er and the qui­eter ones were get­ting qui­eter.”

Ceunen nat­u­ral­ly sought a dig­i­tal solu­tion to ensure that every­one would feel more includ­ed. One of these was Fri­day Pulse, which allows employ­ers to gauge how their work­ers are feel­ing each week by ask­ing one ques­tion: “How have you felt at work this week?” This gen­er­ates a “hap­pi­ness KPI” that can be tracked over time on an indi­vid­ual or group basis.

Carefree’s employ­ees have engaged extreme­ly well with the app, which has oth­er func­tion­al­i­ty that allows users to dis­cuss things that have and haven’t gone well dur­ing the week.

Pastoral solutions

The char­i­ty has also embraced Spill, an app that works with­in Slack, the pop­u­lar mes­sag­ing plat­form. This enables employ­ees to book one-to-one ther­a­py ses­sions online with qual­i­fied providers. 

“One of our team mem­bers who was strug­gling with home­work­ing used Spill,” Ceunen says. “They have since said that it was exact­ly what they need­ed. It means that employ­ees can deal with prob­lems ear­ly on, rather than let­ting them build up until the whole thing explodes and then hav­ing to wait months for treat­ment on the NHS.”

Tony Stew­art is head of dig­i­tal at Scar­let­tab­bott, a con­sul­tan­cy spe­cial­is­ing in employ­ee engage­ment. He believes that a busi­ness needs to have a clear pur­pose in mind for any tech-based solu­tion it adopts in this area. 

“I wouldn’t say that there’s a sin­gle piece of tech that every busi­ness requires to sup­port the well­be­ing of its team mem­bers,” he says. “The right choice depends on the busi­ness goals and employ­ment strat­e­gy of each com­pa­ny, along with the com­mu­ni­ty it’s sup­port­ing.”

As the hybrid mod­el – a mix of remote and office work­ing – looks like becom­ing the new norm, busi­ness lead­ers must ensure they find tech­nol­o­gy-based solu­tions that gen­uine­ly sup­port their employ­ees’ well­be­ing.

While Miller believes there has been a push in the past decade to encour­age peo­ple to bring their “whole selves” to work, any remain­ing divi­sion between home life and work life has “dis­ap­peared rapid­ly”, as video calls beam col­leagues into each other’s homes.

“Employ­ers that might not have felt a duty of care before the pan­dem­ic have prob­a­bly reap­praised that stance,” he says. “Now they’ll think not only about how to look after work­ers in the office, but about how to look after them as peo­ple more broad­ly.”